FAQ
Most people come to us somewhere between “something feels off” and “I know exactly what I need.” These are the questions that come up most, answered the way we would answer them on a call.
A logo is one piece of a brand, not the brand itself. Your brand is the full system: positioning, messaging, typography, color, imagery, and the consistent experience someone has across your website, your storefront, your social media, and your printed materials. A logo is the signature on all of it. Businesses that invest in a logo alone usually end up back where they started, because the logo was never the thing that was broken.
A brand system is a documented set of rules that keeps a brand consistent everywhere it appears. It typically includes logo variations and usage rules, a color palette with exact color codes, a typography hierarchy, voice and messaging guidance, and templates for the things you produce most often. The point is that anyone on your team, or any vendor you hire, can produce something that looks like it came from you.
The brand comes first, but that does not mean you need a new website. A website is a container for your positioning, your messaging, and your visual identity, so building one before those are settled means designing around decisions you have not made yet. If your site is already live and the brand is the part that never got sorted out, we build the brand and then bring the existing site into line with it. That is usually far less work than a rebuild.
It depends on whether your positioning is wrong or just your execution. If your audience, your message, and your differentiation are clear and only the visuals feel dated or inconsistent, a visual identity is the smaller project. If people cannot tell what you do or why you are different, no amount of visual work will fix it, and you need the full foundation with positioning and messaging included. That work builds from your existing identity when there is one worth keeping, so the bigger project does not mean starting over. The Elevator Brand Index will tell you which one you are looking at before anyone quotes you.
The clearest signal is when your business looks smaller or less professional than it actually is. Other signs: your materials look like they came from different companies, you hesitate before sending someone to your website, competitors with worse work appear more established, or you find yourself explaining what you do a different way every time. If you want a structured read rather than a gut check, the Elevator Brand Index scores five areas of your brand and takes a few minutes.
The Elevator Brand Index (EBI) is our free scoring framework that measures brand strength across five pillars: Brand Direction, Brand Alignment, Brand Structure, Brand Visibility, and Brand Momentum. Each is scored out of 20 for a total out of 100, and the result places a business in one of five readiness levels, from Ground Floor through Growth Mode. It takes a few minutes, it costs nothing, and it tells both of us where the real gaps are before anyone talks about scope or price.
Evaluate, Build, Support, Grow. Evaluate is where we find out what is actually going on with your brand. Build is where we fix it, whether that means a logo, a full identity, a website, or all of it. Support is what keeps it from drifting once it is done. Grow is there when you are ready to push harder on visibility. It is a sequence, not a staircase. Most people start with Evaluate because it is free and it takes a few minutes, then do the piece of Build they actually need. Where you go after that is up to you.
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No. You can start with one piece, whether that is a logo, a single landing page, or a set of print materials, and stop there.
A brand project typically runs three to four weeks, a website four to six, and a brand and website together six to eight, all measured from the day your content arrives. Our production speed is rarely the thing that sets the timeline. What actually moves a schedule is how quickly feedback comes back and how fast your content arrives, which is why we name a content date in every proposal.
We revise until it is right. What keeps that from dragging on is timing: brand feedback happens at concept and refinement, and websites are reviewed at wireframe, design, and build, so changes land where they are cheap rather than after everything downstream has been built on top of them. The one exception is Express Logo, which includes two revision rounds because it is priced for speed. If the scope itself changes partway through, we will talk about it before doing the work rather than after.
Time for feedback at defined checkpoints, access to whatever brand materials and content you already have, and one clear decision maker. The last one matters more than people expect. Projects slow down most often when feedback arrives from several people at different times and contradicts itself, so we ask that one person consolidates it. We also name a content deadline in the proposal, because a project waiting on copy is a project that quietly doubles in length.
You do, once final payment is received. You get the final logo files in every format you need, your brand guide, and full ownership of the work. We keep archive copies so we can help you later, and we show the work in our own portfolio and on social media. The assets are yours and you are never dependent on us to use them.
Every site we build carries website care and security at $150 a month, and it is required. It covers WordPress core, plugin and theme updates, backups, uptime monitoring, malware scanning, and a monthly health report, so the site you paid for stays working. Most clients also move into an ongoing Support plan starting at $750 a month, which includes website care along with design and update hours and a set number of social posts each month, so your site and your channels keep moving instead of going stale. Plans run on a twelve month agreement, billed monthly.
Yes, and it is there when you want it rather than something you sign up for. The Grow phase covers SEO, content strategy, landing pages, lead capture, and paid media management, scoped to whatever you are actually trying to grow. Some clients move into it right after launch. Others take the brand and run with it themselves for a year first, which is part of why the brand guide exists. Either way the door stays open. The one thing we will not do is run ads for a brand that is not built yet, because paid traffic pointed at an unclear brand mostly wastes money. Advertising budget is always paid by you, directly to the platform.
Yes, and it comes in two sizes. Local Search Setup builds out your Google Business Profile properly: categories, services, service areas, description, photos, the questions people actually ask, a review request flow, and consistent listings across the directories that matter. We can do this for any business, whether or not we built your website, and it comes included in The Lift. Search Foundation adds the website side: keyword research, page level optimization, internal linking, and a priority list of what to write next. That one runs on WordPress sites we built, because optimizing a site properly means being able to change it.
Once you’re set up, two monthly options keep you visible. Listed keeps your profile current and active, and Managed takes on more of the ongoing work to help you show up more often. Every site we build already includes the basics at no extra cost: analytics, Search Console, and your Google Business Profile claimed and connected.
Only if you want website work. Brand work, print, social, local search, and strategy do not touch your site at all, and none of them care what platform you are on. If you want us improving or rebuilding the site, it needs to be on WordPress. Moving is usually less painful than people expect, and it is often cheaper than repairing a site that cannot be properly repaired.
Our most simple logo package, the Express Logo, starts at $500. You fill out a short preference questionnaire, we design the logo, and the full $500 credits toward a larger brand project if you decide you want one later. An expanded visual identity with a logo suite, color palette, typography, and a brand guide starts at $900. A full identity and positioning system, including messaging and a strategy session, starts at $1,800. The Lift package brings a logo, a five-page website, and your Google listing together for $4,000.
These are starting prices. What moves them is how much has to be built rather than refined, how many variations and applications you need, and how crowded your category is. Everything is a fixed project fee, quoted before work starts, so you know the number going in.
Improving the site you already have starts at $1,500. A new website starts at $3,500 and includes five pages. eCommerce starts at $5,500, because a store carries product pages, payment and shipping setup, and inventory structure that a brochure site does not. The Lift package brings a logo, a five-page website, and your Google listing together for $4,000.
Those are starting prices, and scope moves them. More pages, custom functionality, booking or membership systems, a large product catalog, or content we write rather than receive all add to the number. We scope your site before quoting, so the price you get is for your project rather than an average.
Every site we build comes set up to be found: clean page structure, Google Analytics and Search Console installed, and your Google Business Profile claimed and connected. Deeper search and local work is separate, and we will tell you whether you need it. Every site also carries required Website Care and Security at $150 a month, which covers WordPress updates, backups, security monitoring, and uptime, so the site you paid for stays working.
Whether improving or rebuilding is the right call depends on what you have. A site on a dated theme, or one patched by four different people over six years, can cost more to untangle than to rebuild. We will tell you which one you are looking at before you spend anything.
Flat project prices. You get the number before work starts, and it does not move unless the scope moves, in which case we tell you before the work happens rather than after. Our Essential, Elevated, and Authority retainers are a flat monthly fee on a twelve month agreement.” We do not bill by the hour, because charging for time would mean charging you more for us being slower.
No. Our smallest project is an Express Logo, and we do not require anyone to buy a package they do not need. What we do require is sequence. We will not build a website for a brand that has not been defined, and we will not run paid advertising for a business whose website does not convert, because both of those waste your money. Beyond that, you can start anywhere.
Our fee covers our work only. Third-party costs are yours and are always stated in writing before you sign: hosting, domain registration, and SSL, plugins and software subscriptions, stock photography and licensed fonts, printing, and advertising budget. For paid media we manage the campaigns and you pay the platform directly, so your ad spend stays in your own account where you can see it.
Hire a freelancer when you need one well-defined deliverable and you already know exactly what it should be. Hire a studio when the problem is bigger than any single deliverable, when the pieces need to work together, or when you need someone to tell you what the actual problem is. A freelancer does the job you describe. A studio helps you figure out what the job should be.
A template is a pre-built layout you fit your content into, and a custom build is a site structured around your business, your customer’s path, and how you actually get found. Templates are faster and cheaper up front, which makes them a reasonable choice for a business still figuring out its positioning. The tradeoff is that they constrain what you can say, they rarely handle SEO structure well, and they tend to look like the other businesses using the same template.
Yes. We are based in the Midlands of South Carolina and work with businesses in Columbia, Elgin, Camden, Lugoff, and across Richland and Kershaw counties, and we also work with clients nationwide. Brand strategy, design, and website work all run well remotely. Local clients get the option of meeting in person, which some prefer for the initial strategy session.
We work with small and mid-sized businesses of every kind. Retail, professional practices, restaurants, home services, schools, nonprofits, and civic organizations. Recent work includes a charter school brand and website, a county chamber of commerce rebrand, an eCommerce site for a skincare line, and a 40th anniversary campaign for an independent pharmacy that reached 62,000 people in 21 days. The common thread is not an industry. It is a business doing good work whose brand has not caught up to it.
We use AI the way we use any other tool in the studio, to move faster on the parts that do not need a human, and not on the parts that do. Research, first drafts, technical audits, and analysis are all places it genuinely helps. Your logo, your positioning, your visual system, and your final work are decisions made by a designer with twenty years of experience, not generated. AI is a tool, not a designer. It has no idea what your competitors look like, who your customers are, or what you are trying to become, and a brand built without those answers is just decoration.
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Book a call and we will show you where your brand stands, what it takes to fix it, and what that costs.
